The Jonathan Hosmer House

The Owners

The Hosmers were an early Acton family, serving the town from its beginning. Jonathan Hosmer (1712-1775) was a selectman and town clerk for many years as well as one of the first Deacons of Acton's church. Jonathan Hosmer (1734-1822), like his father, was a brickmason and farmer. Jonathan married Submit Hunt (1737-1812) in 1760 and built the Hosmer House.

Though records are not perfect for the time period, it appears that Jonathan and several of his brothers did military service during the Revolutionary War. His younger brother Abner was killed at the North Bridge in Concord, April 19, 1775. In addition to other roles in Acton, Jonathan served on the town's Committee of Correspondence in 1777 and as part of a committee to provide for soldiers' families in 1779 and 1780.

Seven children were born to the family of Jonathan and Submit Hosmer. Their eldest, Jonathan, died in Bennington in 1777. In addition to the large family, from at least the time of the 1790 census, Quartus, a "Black man" according to his death record and a non-white free person according to census records, lived in the house until he died in 1827.

When the Hosmers' surviving son Simon (1774-1840) married Sally Whitcomb in 1796, an addition was added to the house so that both families could live there. Simon served as deacon and started a music school in Acton. In 1839, the year before his death, Simon sold the homestead to Rufus Holden who split up the land and sold it after seven years.

In 1846 Francis Tuttle (1791-1877) bought the house. Tuttle had run the Center Store and served Acton as Town Clerk, Selectman, Justice of the Peace, and State legislator. He and his wife Harriet Wetherbee (1795-1878) had twelve children. One of their sons, Capt. Daniel Tuttle, led Acton's Company E to the Civil War in April of 1861. Four of Francis Tuttle's daughters were married in the house: Elizabeth to Elnathan Jones, Sarah Jane to Jonathan K.W. Wetherbee, Martha Etta to Zoeth Taylor, and Sophia to Henry Haynes.

In 1868 the house was sold to Edward O'Neil, whose wife and heirs owned it until 1911. In 1918, George S. Todd purchased the house. It was the Todds who brought electricity and water to the house, through fortunately, they made no structural changes. The Todds were the last occupants of the place before it became the property of the Acton Historical Society in 1976.

The Structure

The original house consisted of a center chimney, two front parlors, a keeping room and two bedrooms upstairs. One unusual feature of the house was the plaster painted to resemble brick on the exterior end walls. A section of this brick mason's advertising is still in place between the 1760 and 1797 structures. It was the addition of the western portion in 1797 that gave the house its long low lines and second chimney. On the front, the two finely proportioned doorways and windowed frames appear to be late Georgian. The upper windows at the end of the house have their original sashes, but the lower and front ones have been replaced. The earliest front windows had 8 over 12 panes of glass. Clapboarding was added, probably in 1797, and white was the only color of paint found on the clapboards.

The entrance through the back door opens into the keeping room. This room has been restored close to its 1760 state. The red paint was the oldest color found in this room. The large, deep fireplace with its rear brick oven may have been expanded later to include the front brick oven.

Through the doorway from the keeping room is one of the two front parlors, now restored as a parlor in the early 1800's. The wallpaper is a reproduction of an 1802 sample from a house in Brewster, MA. The paint approximates the original colors. All the wood around the fireplace has been restored. The furniture in this room is representative of the early 1800's and is from houses in this area.

The second parlor is now called "The Wedding Room" for the several weddings held here. The room is furnished in the 1860's fashion although the wallpaper is from 1830's. The special feature of this room is a corner cupboard. Although intrinsic to this house, it is considered older than the house itself, suggesting that it was moved from another building. Again, the color of the paint has been duplicated. Ivory was a popular color in the 1860s, while the paint in the back of the corner cupboard reflects an earlier period. This parlor has reproduction wall-to-wall carpeting, which was popular in the mid-19th century and at that time was woven in mills in Lowell.

The upstairs includes three main rooms and a long lean-to across the back, which makes the saltbox shape of the house. One of the rooms is furnished as a bedroom and contains a display of children's items. The second upstairs room open to the public contains exhibits relating to Acton industries.

Architectural features include gunstock posts, the exposed center chimney, a large number of different fireplace styles (good advertising for a mason), and an unusual set of three shelves set over the fireplace in one room.

In 2015, more space for public exhibitions was opened up in areas previously closed to the public. See our Events & Exhibits page for information about current happenings.